Last week, we heard that the GMOF, i.e., the Government Medical Officers Forum, demanded that powdered milk be banned because it contains some fats and small amounts of other unspecified unhealthy ingredients. They want everyone to drink fresh milk, since everyone in Sri Lanka has a fridge (and should live in air-conditioned houses).

Even better, the super-rich will only drink unpasteurized milk, custom-drawn directly from the udder of a healthy dairy cow, delivered to them by special courier, as they don’t want ‘industrial’ fresh milk, let alone powdered milk.

Not to be outdone, according to the ‘The Island’ (31st Jan.) newspaper, the Government Medical Officers’ Association President, Dr. Anuruddha Padeniya has moved ahead to push for a total ban on agro-chemicals. He has been assured by a Sri Lankan medical doctor in the USA, and Dr. Jayasumana of the Rajarata University, that the root cause of the mystery chronic kidney disease was due to the excessive use of agro-chemicals. Surely, according to Dr. Jayasumana, it is the arsenic in the agro-chemicals that causes Kidney disease. So why does he and the GMOA president want to ban agro-chemicals, instead of banning arsenic in agro-chemicals?

Has Dr. Jayasuman abandoned his belief that arsenic is the cause of Kidney disease? Indeed, in an article in ‘The Island’ article dated October 22nd, Prof. Nalin de Silva complained that he has been disowned by the Kelaniya group - so is this a continuation of it where the arsenic theory is now fully orphaned?

The WHO report is very different to those of Jayasumana or the fluoride-toxicity people, etc.

Why doesn’t the GMOA begin with banning sugar and salt? It has now been completely established that the daily dietary requirements of sugar and salt are naturally present in the vegetables, fruit, fish and meat that people eat. Salt is useful for its preservative actions, but should be rigorously washed off before consumption, if you don’t want to notch up your blood pressure. Similarly, drinking tea or coffee highly sweetened with sugar, or drinking ‘aerated drinks (pop)’, Coke, imported juice, etc., laced with sugar (typically five table spoons per cup, unbeknown to the drinker), eating curd and ‘kithul’ treacle, sweet fruits, honey etc., is the sure and certain path to diabetes type-II and obesity. Sugar is also the preferred nutrient of mutant cells that become cancerous cells. There is unanimity in the medical profession about salt and sugar. Diabetes-II has reached epidemic proportions in Sri Lanka. And yet, the president of the GMOA has not moved even his small finger against sugar and salt.

Maybe the GMOA president is just waiting till the consultant doctor in the United States tells him to act! Until that happens, the GMOA has its battles planned! It will FIGHT to get agro-chemicals banned!!!

The GMOA can claim that this is more noble a call than that of FUTA which hides a big salary increase behind a 6% investment in education!

Where will the plantation sector get its fertilizers for tea, rubber etc? Why, we can’t we resort to traditional agriculture using ‘geri-katu’ (bone-meal)? After all, we can hope that when milk powder is banned, there would be a resurgence of dairy farming, and there should be lots of ‘geri-katu’.

The GMOA and the GMOF are clearly setting the country’s agricultural policy too, and there is a clear method in their madness.

The GMOA president only wants the paddy and vegetable farmers to not use agro-chemicals, leaving the biggest users of agro-chemicals untouched.

Why does the GMOA president ignore that the ecology is inter-connected, and that pollution and environmental contamination do not stay in one place.

Knee-jerk reactions by even the President of the GMOA, just because two people (or more) said so, cannot be the type of judgment that doctors were taught to exercise in their medical schools.